I did search through all of the hits for book.xls and tried some of the
solutions just in case but none worked.

Somehow, in Excel 2003, I managed to save the book.xls with a document
included. Now whenever I open Excel I get the document with the filename
book.xls and I am informed that it is in use by myself and canonly be opened
as "Read Only". Not matter what I try I cannot get it back to the original
book.xls. I tried wiping the document out of book.xls leaving a blank
workbook/sheet but it won't let me save over it so I saved it as a "copy of
book.xls" with the intention of manually deleting the bad copy and adding my
new one, once I renamed it book.xls. No deal either. I checked the properties
of the bad book.xls and it does not indicate read-only there....but when I
open it or try to replace it.....no dice.
Any suggestions?
Jack